It’s a given that in order for a song to be powerful and effective, it needs to be memorable. But what makes a song memorable? As we know, songs are a partnership of many different elements all working together. So it’s difficult to point a finger at one particular component and say that it alone […]
There are some songs, when you compare the start of the song to the end of it, make it obvious what we mean by musical energy. “Stairway to Heaven” is a great example: it starts very quietly, uses subdued acoustic guitar and recorders, with a nostalgic, mid-range vocal approach. The hook is probably the most […]
I had a professor once who, while commenting on what the music of the future would sound like, said, “Well, if we knew that, we’d be writing it now.” That’s very likely not true. What’s more likely is something like that scene from “Back to the Future”, when Marty plays “Johnny B. Goode”, which morphs into […]
There is a lot of attention paid to song choruses, and for good reason. A chorus is where the catchy bit is either going to do its job and pull in an audience, or it’s not. So there’s a lot riding on the success of a chorus. If you’re ready to take your songwriting to […]
In songwriting, a formula amounts to a set of steps that are predictable “responses” to whatever has just happened. And in general, they’re not necessarily desirable. What’s so undesirable about formulas? It comes down to this: most of your listeners like to hear musical ideas that are generated in a spontaneous sort of way, and […]
Every singer-songwriter has an identifiable style, but what does that word style actually refer to? For the most part, your own “style” refers to the performance and production that listeners hear when they listen to your songs. You can take practically any song and move it firmly into one genre or another just by adjusting the way […]
